Rules

(condensed without most of the screenshots)

Winning

Controlling 25 or more of the 37 planets at the beginning of 3 successive turns is a win for a single player.

Factions:A winning faction may consist of 2 or 3 players in a 6 player game and 2 players in a 4 or 5 player game.
A faction is formed by declaration at the beginning of a turn where the faction holds 25 or more planets.
A faction must meet alliance requirements and hold 25 or more planets at the beginning of the following 2 turns to win.
A faction dissolves if required alliances are missing or the faction holds 24 or fewer planets at the beginning of a turn.

A 2 player faction consists of 2 players allied with each other and may be declared by either member.
A standard 3 player faction (with all members allied with all other members) may be declared by any member.
An empire faction is formed with a dominant player and 2 allies even if those allies are not allied with each other.
--- Only the dominant player may declare the empire and must control at least 13 planets by them self.
----- Empires additionally dissolve if a turn begins with 2 members not mutually allied and the dominant member below 13 planets.

Playing

At the beginning of the game each player holds 1 planet (the color coded space) and has 5 points.

Each turn consists of 4 main sections.
All players submit complete orders for each section and then all orders are processed at the same time.
In the case of combat, a new combat round with new odds etc. will begin as long as any possible combats remain.
Tech note: A buffer is used to store encoded orders
until you transmit them - clear this buffer by reloading the
page - you can transmit partial orders and still continue.Combat is a
store then transmit for each location step-thru process.

A - Economic

--Collect 1-5 points per planet owned depending on color (your color = 5, 2 closest colors = 4, gray = 3, 2 semi-opposite colors = 2, far side color = 1),
--followed by scrap orders (ships not scrapped cost 1 point each to maintain),
--then repair orders (1 point repairs 1 point damage) as desired and you can afford,
--then you can order any ships not being repaired to hide (damage the ship system to go dark - dark ships are out of play until repaired but must be maintained),
--and finally any build orders are submitted - can build at any owned planet - unused points are saved

B - Movement

Moves are ordered as a series of segments. An encounter with a stationary non-allied ship at the end of any segment ends movement for that ship.--Ships already in an encounter cannot move. Ships that have no drive units cannot move. Ships that do not move are stationary. --If a ship is ordered to move with no change in position it is still "moving" rather than stationary.Dark ships (hidden, damaged system) cannot move but are dark rather than stationary.

Drive units - Each drive unit can power 1 jump or 1 warp. Slipstream range is 1 space per drive unit - a ship uses slipstream as the first move segment followed by any warp segments. Ships with jump drives can order any mixture of warps and jumps.

Slipstream and Warp are vector plus distance with warp distance always being 1.

A Jump from any space moves to a fixed (randomly predetermined for each war and location) space and lists the jump in your charts. Jumps are one way, not reciprocal. The space you jump into has its own jump outof destination.

C - Combat

You attack with the combined weapons power of all your target's enemies and defend with all the weapons power of your attacker's enemies that are present in a combat. Attacker enemies AE and target enemies TE with chance to hit as TE/(AE+TE).

The number of shots you fire depend on your ships and can be allocated among any available targets. All shots must be fired.

Each ship that has a weapon gets 1 shot. A cruiser or basestar with undamaged multifire gets 1 shot per weapon unit (these are the only ships with more than 1 weapon unit).

Shots that hit damage armor first and after any armor is reduced to 0 damage a random remaining unit on the target ship. All damage is applied each round. Each hit removes a unit from the target ship so the next hit removes one of the remaining units.A drive of 2 is actually 2 drive units with weapons and armor being similar while system, sensors, and such are all single units. 1 hit = 1 point damage = 1 unit taken out.

All ships have a system unit and if it is damaged the ship goes Dark and vanishes to all other players until repaired. This is same as hiding a ship during the economic portion of the turn and is an Achilles' heel for all ships.

(If weapons and drive both reach 0 the ship is destroyed and vanishes.)

Damaged multifire limits number of shots that ship can make to 1 per round instead of 1 per weapon.

If weapons are reduced to 0 a ship becomes just another target and cannot fire any shots.

Other units are non-combat capabilities: Slip and Jump units, Sensor unit which extends sensor range by 1 space, Drive units that can keep a weaponless ship still around as a target but have no other combat effect, and Terraforming units which determine whether a Terraformer that remained stationary can change a planet's color. In combat these units give the important units things to hide out amongst.

After each combat round a new combat round will begin as long as possible combats remain.
When no combats remain planet ownerships will update for the final section of the turn.

Planet ownerships change according to ship locations and weapon strengths. A weapon strength of more than 0 is required to take over a planet. Dark ships do not count.

Unowned - goes to highest weapon total or nobody if a tie.

Owned - goes to highest enemy if not a tie, unchanged if ally or owner is highest or tied for highest, becomes unowned if enemies are tied for highest.

D - EcoPolitical

Terraforming:

Every owned planet where the owner has a stationary (did not move this turn) terraformer with an undamaged terraforming unit will change color 1 step closer to the owner's color if not already matching.

Terraforming is automatic to go from 2 to 3 points (that would be going gray) and from 4 to 5 points (your own color).Where you have a choice of 2 colors (the 2 point and the 4 point colors) you can pick either one.

Alliance Settings:

Each player submits alliance settings as a yes/no for each other player. If 2 players have each other set as yes they are allies for the following turn. If either has the other set as no then they are not allies.

Game Setup - Starting a War

Whoever knows the Mod password creates a war. When all done fighting a war the Mod can delete it. Mod can also resign a player from a war.

Players join the war (select war, select color, and make a password) which puts them on the player lobby page logged in - they can make a shortcut to the lobby page already logged into the war.

The player lobby page can open chat in a new tab. You enter the game (the map page) from the lobby and e❎it the game to the lobby. A player can resign themselves from a war on the lobby page.